What If Commited style
by stillonJAGwithdrawal
Summary: Changed a few words here and there. I think I'm fairly satisfied with it now, so I'm changing the status to completed. Review and let me know if I'm right in being satisfied. Not unlike some in the story, I might add, but you have to read to find out!


Grissom and the janitor walk towards the office, blissfully unaware that Sara is in the clutches of a lunatic. Sara is trying desperately to calm the deranged man who is pressing a makeshift knife into her neck. _"__Grissom! Grissom, where are you, dammit?__"_ her mind screams.

"Do you think I'm smart?" Robbie whines.

"Yeah," Sara manages.

"Do you think I'm right?"

"Uh huh!" _"Grissom! Come back!"_

Grissom reaches the office but the janitor can't open the door, it's locked. Grissom moves to look inside. His heart skips a beat and then begins to hammer frantically. "Oh, dear God!" he breaths. His eyes lock with Sara's as she struggles against her attacker. The relief in her eyes at the sight of him, mingled with the fear and panic they both feel seem s to wrap a cold hand around his heart. "Open the door."

"I can't. I don't have the right key," the janitor tells him.

"Just open it!" Grissom says quietly, but fiercely, shoving the panic down but unable to keep the emotion out of his voice. He watches helplessly for a moment, never taking his eyes from Sara's.

Finding comfort in his gaze, Sara wisely stops struggling and simply looks pleadingly at Grissom. "Please open the door!" he begs the janitor. "_There__'__s something in her eyes,__"_ he thinks as he tries to place it. _"__Fear and anxiety, certainly. Pleading and desperation are there, but there 's something else. Hope, maybe? __No, it can't be. Can it?__ Love! That__'__s what it is! She loves me!__" _And the most remarkable thing of all is that the love is overpowering everything else he reads in her eyes! His heart leaps even as it pounds in fear. To the utter surprise of the janitor, not to mention Sara, a smile slowly spreads across his face. Abruptly, his face hardens as he knows what he has to do.

Frantically, but with a new determined sense of purpose, he takes a few steps backwards to get a running start and slams his shoulder into the window with all his might, crashing through and rolling onto the desk and onto the floor of the office. "Don't you touch her!" he roars. "Don't you _dare_ touch her!" This distraction has taken Robbie's attention from Sara to Grissom and he shoves her into the desk behind them to aim his weapon at Grissom.

Before Robbie, or Sara, realize what has happened Grissom has knocked the weapon from Robbie's hand and shoved him to the floor, holding him down. "Don't you ever touch her, you sick bastard!" With this, Grissom grabs Robbie by the hair and slams his head against the floor. Finally, the janitor bursts in, followed by several guards.

Letting them take over, Grissom leaps off Robbie and over to Sara. "Honey, are you hurt? Did that son of a bitch-" he asks, his voice breaking.

"You came!" she interrupts, the relief evident amidst the emotion in her voice.

"Always./Don't I always./Of course I came./ With this declaration he sweeps her huddled form up in his arms, crushing her to him. He runs out of the room and down the hall to the door. Turning, he pushes against the bar with his back and steps awkwardly out into the open air. They both take a deep breath of the fresh air, appreciating its contrast to the building they have left. Grissom doesn't stop running, however, until he reaches the sidewalk. He stands there, panting, but holding Sara tightly, until momentarily a cab pulls up. Expertly reading the look in Grissom's eyes the cabbie senses something is wrong and gets out and opens the door. As if suddenly his actions are realized by his body, Grissom wearily lowers himself onto the seat, but still clutches Sara protectively. He gives the cabbie the address of Sara's apartment and leans back into the seat.

Settling into his lap, Sara allows the tears that had been threatening to fall trickle down her face. This simple, and quite reasonable, act causes Grissom's eyes to well up as well. He tightens his hold around her waist with one hand, and gently brushes a lock of hair from her face with the other. "Don't cry, honey. It's ok now. Grissom's here. You're safe now. Grissom's got you. I'm here, baby," he croons soothingly. "It'll be ok. I've got you. Don't cry," he whispers reassuringly, as much to himself as to her.

"Hypocrite," she whispers shakily as she lifts her trembling hand to tenderly wipe away the lone tear running down his face.

"That's the spirit," he replies, trying unsuccessfully to keep the sobs out of his voice. He strokes her hair soothingly as they cling to each other, sobbing with relief, until the cab comes to a stop. Reluctantly loosing his hold, Grissom takes out his wallet and pays the cabbie, who again opens the door, his curiosity growing by the minute.

Grissom doesn't relax his hold again until they are inside Sara's apartment with the door locked and bolted behind them. Wearily he lowers her to the sofa and kneels down beside her. Helplessly unable to keep from touching her Grissom takes her hand in his, soothingly caressing it with his thumb. He simply stares at her, watching, as if he is afraid she might disappear/get attacked/hurt again before his very eyes.

Finally, Sara breaks the silence, "What the hell were you thinking, crashing through the window like that?"

Without hesitation Grissom blurts, "I was thinking that that monster could have killed you. I wanted to hurt him for simply looking at you. I wanted to kill him for scaring you, much less touching you!" His voice cracks. "So help me, Sara, and God help him if he had hurt you," he breaks off and boldly/without thinking buries his face in her hair to hide his tears.

"You could have been hurt. Damn it, Grissom, you could have been killed!" she scolds softly as she raises her hand to stroke his hair in comfort, as he had.

"Oh, Sara, Sara, don't you see? " He raises his head to look deep into her eyes, so much that she felt he could see into her soul, and declares vehemently, "I would die for you!"

On impulse, Grissom hesitantly lowers his head and, ever so gently, kisses the bruise that was already forming from Robbie's weapon pressing against her neck. Sara gasps with pleasure as much as surprise.

"Did it help?"

"Help?" she manages to breath.

"You know, kiss it and make it better. Did it work?" he asks, unable to keep the trace of doubtful fear from creeping into his voice.

"Um, maybe, um, would you mind trying again?" she asks hesitantly. Grissom smiles and eagerly complies as she goes completely still.

"Anything else hurt?" he asks, absentmindedlytoying with her hair.

"I'm not the one who crashed through a window and beat an armed psychopath to a pulp," she points out, her voice thankfully sounding surprisingly steady.

"True. In fact, I am in pain." he teases, grinning.

"Where?" Sara asks, alarmed.

"Here," he answers as he turns his shoulder toward her.

"Oh Grissom! You're bleeding! Your shirt's torn and you're cut!" She rises up on her elbows to examine it.

"It's just a scratch," he insists bravely.

"Bullshit!" she mutters angrily. Despite her concern, she can't help feeling a spark of desire as she mischievously grasps his torn sleeve in her hands and pulls, revealing his cut, muscular, and invitingly bare arm. Grissom stares in wonder at his ruined sleeve as he feels his entire body harden in response. Efficiently, she takes the torn cloth and wraps it tightly around the wound and secures it with a tidy knot. Hesitating only a moment she lifts her face to place a tender kiss on the bandage.

At his inquisitive look she replies, "Kiss it and make it better."

Grissom reaches for his collar button. Sara's eyes widen in alarm. He reassures her by teasing, "Relax, its not fatal, doc." He unbuttons his collar. "Here," he orders, pointing to a tiny cut on his collarbone. Obediently she places a tender kiss next to his finger. As Sara watches reverently, and quite unabashedly, he slowly unbuttons the rest of his ruined shirt and after removing it, carelessly casts it aside. "Here," he whispers in a thick voice as he points to a scratch on his jaw with a slightly trembling hand. As she complies, his arm is immediately around her waist, making her gasp.

He points to a cut on his lip with the hand that wasn't clutching the back of her shirt. "Here!" he huskily murmurs before capturing her mouth with his. His other hand fists in her hair as he kisses her with all the relief and possessiveness he feels. He kisses her with such possessiveness that for a moment Sara is to shocked to respond. When her mouth parts on a gasp Grissom's tongue darts in, exploring the mouth he had often wondered about until his head had hurt. Her arms reach up to wind around his neck as she arches up to meet him and they cling to each other in a frantic embrace until, before his wits abandon him completely, Grissom breathlessly breaks away.

"Sara...ah, Sara...I've wanted to do that for so long! " he grinds out. He eases her back to lean into the throw pillows as he shifts to lie partially on top of her, keeping one foot on the floor for much needed support. The sensation of her breasts pressing against his bare chest brings a low groan from him and a gasp from her. "Wanted this..." he whispers as he slowly, agonizingly, brings his lips to meet hers once again.

He breaks the kiss to look into her eyes, satisfied that he has replaced the fear he saw at the hospital with a different, sweeter kind of fear. "Wanted you...Oh, Sara how I've wanted you..."

"Grissom, we can't, I mean...I…well, you…we..." Grissom reluctantly abandons his current task of forging a path of kisses down her jaw line to bring his lips to her wandering ones, silencing her protests.

"Can't what?" he challenges, his eyes fiery.

"But what about your career, Grissom?" she asks, testing him.

"To hell with my career!"he grinds out. Before she can reply he kisses her again, just as possessively as before but now with resolve. "I should have done that five years ago…God knows I wanted to...I…That is..."

Sara crosses her fingers behind his neck as she responds to his kisses with her own. "_Please! Please let him say it! Finally let him say it!_"

"I mean..I've…I've loved you for five years and I can't take it anymore!" he finally shouts. She just gawks for a moment, speechless and triumphant. "Say something, please, Sara!" he pleads, softer now.

"Don't you like loving me?" she asks him with a smile and is rewarded with a tortured groan.

"I meant I can't take hiding it anymore."

"I know. But if it was such a burden why suffer? Why not tell me and set us both free?"

Unable to put his own feelings into words Grissom borrows some, "Suffer love, a good epithet. I do suffer love indeed for I love thee against my will!"

"Well that's terribly romantic. Try again, Quotemaster."

"Loving you is torture..." before crushing his mouth to hers.

"Torture doesn't sound much better," she points out absently.

"Then let me show you...sweet...torture..."

She answers him by arching up to kiss him with as much feeling as he had kissed her, and a great deal more relief.

Breaking away," Why do you think I moved to Vegas?" she asks, smiling up at him with a hint of triumph.

"Because you secretly have a passion for all you can eat buffets?" he teases.

"No! I moved because...because I... and you were," she breaks off.

"Hard, isn't it," he says gently, "Baring your soul and all?"

She shakes her head in desperation and frustration, "No, it's easy! …I love you, Gil Grissom…Nothing is easier for me to do. I love you! When I saw you in the window today, that's all I could think. I love him and I might not ever get to tell him. I promised myself that if I got out of there I'd tell you, even if," she pauses to take a deep steadying breath. He watches her patiently. "Even if it meant losing you forever," she finishes in a rush, the doubt evident in her voice.

His breath catches on her words before he replies, "My darling Sara, you will never lose me."

"But before, when we talked, you said,you couldn't, you didn't know what to do about," she falls silent as she sees his eyes harden in anger, not at her but with himself.

"I'm sorry. I'm can't begin to tell you-"

"It's ok." Sara interrupts.

"No! No, it's not ok!" Grissom blurts earnestly. "That's what you said before. I was so damn stupid to let you walk away. Like an idiot I made the same mistake, over and over and over... Honey, I love you. I've always loved you. Since the day of that lecture in San Francisco, I've loved you...I tried not to. I thought I shouldn't." She raises a brow. "You're so much younger, could do so much better than-" he laughs when she rolls her tear filled eyes. "But seriously. I thought it was wrong." Absentmindedly he begins to stroke her hair. "There's the job. I'm your boss, for godsake! I didn't want to see you in trouble any more than I wanted to see you hurt. Even if I didn't give a damn about my own career, I could never compromise yours. So many things could have been compromised if I let my feelings for you get in the way." Her lips twitch. "More than I did," he amends. "They'd look into our cases, Sara. People we worked so hard to send away could be set free because we-" he shudders. "Then there's the team to consider, the hours,our personal lives would suck. We'd never be a normal couple, Sara. Don't you see?"

"Grissom, shut up. You're grasping at straws. I know all about the job and the hours. I work here too, remember? I understand. Really. Why do you think it took us this long to get, um, here? But you're all the personal life I want. Besides, since when did you and I become normal?"

"'The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost.' That was never more true than it is right now, Sara. But,"

"No more buts. The only thing wrong about," she pauses, searching for words, "this, about _us," _she says pointedly, "is that it took us so long to Now, kiss me again," she demands.

He gently kisses her forehead as he continues to run his fingers through her hair. "I don't deserve you," he says quietly.

"Oh, Grissom, you're wrong! " He gently puts his fingers over her mouth, silencing the rest of her protests.

"I," He stops, struggling for words. "Doubt thou the stars are fire/Doubt that the sun doth move/Doubt truth to be a liar/But never doubt I love." He kisses her gently. "Before... before I guess...I was afraid."

"I know."

"You do? How?"

"Remember the Debbie Marlin case?"

"I'm not likely to forget that." He tightens his grip in an unconscious act of possessiveness and protection, remembering.

"Remember when you had Lurie in the interigation room?" Grissom stares at her in shock and awe.

"No, you weren't! You couldn't have been there! Were you? You were!"

"I heard the whole thing, Grissom," she tells him, smiling at the look on his face. He releases his pent up breath in a whoosh. "I watched you, even after he left the room, and my heart just broke. Not just for me, but for you!" She hesitates but forces herself to say, "For us."

He kisses her forehead gently. Her words , nor their meaning, are not lost on him. "How do you think I felt! If I had known you were there I...but why didn't you say something?"

"I wanted to crash through the window like you did today. ..I wanted to tell you ...so much...wanted to take the pain away...more than anything I wanted to hold you...just hold you and tell you everything would be ok...everything was ok."

"Why didn't you?"

"It just wasn't time." She frames his face in her hands. "The risk of your career meant too much, and I understand. Who knows, if I had been really faced with it I might have found out _my _career was too important. You weren't ready, and maybe I wasn't either. But it's the past, ok?" As if to affirm this last statement Sara hugs him fiercely.

"I'm ready now, Sara...I should have said 'Damn the consequences and taken you right there on the table like a-I was a fool to-"

"'The fool thinks himself to be wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.'" she interrupts again.

"_Measure for Measure."_

"Yeah. Incidentally, _Hamlet _? Not prime pillow talk material."

"Is that for future reference?" he asks hopefully, boldly. "Or just, um, now?" he adds after a beat.

She smiles,"'Where love is concerned, too much is not even enough.'"

Heart pounding he replies, "'There is no remedy for love than to love more,'"

"'But lo! Men have become tools of their tools!'" she retorts triumphantly. "Beat that!" she laughs.

"I love you," Grissom says huskily in his best Han Solo voice, which is barely recognizable, much less amusing, but such is love that Sara thinks him terribly clever.

"I know."

"Damn. You win anyway! See, this is why I love you! You're the only one who can out-quote me!"

"Yeah, I kinda caught that subtle meaning there before, love," Sara says drily. "Han loving Leia cause she could fight like him. You love me cause I quote like you." She punches him lightly on the arm, laughing. "Shallow man! That's why you love me, huh?"

"One of the many reasons, darlin," he drawls.

"Do you wanna sleep with me?"

"Did you just say what I think you said?"

'Uh-huh."

"You took the words right out of my mouth. And Sara,"

"Yeah."

"I promise you...I'll do my best to make up for not taking you up on your offer last time."

With this, Grissom solemnly eases himself off the sofa, never taking his eyes off of hers. He lifts her up into his arms as before, but this time there is a different kind of desperation in his movements. He carries her out of the room and down the hall to her bedroom. He reverently lays her down on the bed and lowers himself on top of her.

"I just had a particularly dirty thought," Sara murmurs.

"Don't tell me you're imagining us on the table in the interrogation room, too?" he asks in mock horror.

"No!" she laughs.

"My office, then?"

"Nice, but no."

"Oh, then do tell," he replies, currently occupied with the task of unbuttoning her blouse with sheer worship.

"How ever are you going to fix everywhere I'm hurt?" He looks up, alarmed. Staring into his eyes she says, smiling a bit, "Bumps and bruises are all very well, and easily healed as you have beautifully demonstrated. You healed my neck. I healed your arm."

"But what's WRONG, Sara?" Grissom asks, getting anxious.

"According to my supervisor, everything should be thoroughly investigated. No stone left unturned and all that. We've still got a lot of, um, ground to cover."

Surprised, amused, and most definitely aroused Grissom replies, "Hmm. That is a tricky problem. Fortunately, I have just the thing." They both snicker giddily at his little pun. "Where do you hurt the most?"

"Between you and him? Where do I begin?"

His face falls and he says, "I thought we weren't going to dwell on the past. I thought-" he breaks off as her hand reaches for his trouser button.

"You didn't just heal my neck tonight, you know. You healed my heart. But I still hurt. I'm going to need a lot more attention before I'm all better. Fix where I hurt the most, Grissom."

"Where? Tell me where, Sara!"

"Inside. Deep inside, in my soul. " Grissom groans loudly, making her laugh.


End file.
